Day 2 in the life of Defiance, little bit of humble, little bit of cautious
Posted on: 04.04.2013
I thought, why stop with more insight whats happening with Defiance, inside my head and with the team. Actually, we should probably skip my head and focus on Defiance and the team.
Its the second day in the life of Defiance, you saw our focal points yesterday and to elaborate on what happens here. We try to be in a position to respond to change and react to feedback. That means we frequently re-prioritize and re-evaluate, we course-correct. Some of you might know this as being agile. I prefer wtfisgoingonnowletsfixdatshiinao. Sorry, stay away from my brain. Got it.
The reason this is about being a little bit humble and little bit cautious, is that you might see us talk about very serious issues in a way which might make it look like we dont take it seriously. This is not the case. We do believe that if you cant make fun of yourself, take yourself too seriously and everything is doomed, you will have no joy or passion for what you do anymore. And that will get reflected in the experience you receive. We hope you understands.
With that being said, you will now see our top four issues today, as opposed to yesterday. Some may be have addressed to a large extent, others have gone down in priority because of others have come up are more critical. That does not mean the issues from yesterday are off the list, they are still there, but I hope you get better insight into why we can and do move.
Game Server Crashes Lets be sure to not confuse these with us taking down the server to apply updates. This is totally different and started getting much worse, especially for XBOX in the last 24 hours. You will experience this as disconnects but just tonight, it has ended with full server crashes. Twice. No amount of whiskey, dances of tango or foxtrot can fully convey our (calm professinal) rage and frustration over this.
FKN LAAAAG Icelandic technical term which usually translates quite well to most other languages for some reason. This started showing up yesterday when scaling up certain platforms well beyond anything weve had before and we ran into glass ceilings. We dont like lag. We hate lag. So we respond to it fast. You should also note that lag manifests itself for many reasons, ranging from networking to game servers. So especially if you are on XBOX, grab whiskey and take a dance or two, the game server problem above is causing this as well.
Patching woes If you are experiencing this its for very different reasons. Its depending on platform and location which is why weve been working with our content distribution networks and service providers to address this, identify where its happening etc. There is a thread here you can contribute your information to which will help us. If you cant patch, you cant enter the game and play. Thats like batshit level serious for us. We want you ingame just as much as we do. And its not just so we can stalk you while cloaked. Honest.
Client crashes Like, 120hz. And others. Were already deploying some of these out. We dont like these crashes. The reason this steps into this list is that after these two days, we got enough information from you to identify and summarily fix certain crashes. You see, we often rely as much on your feedback as we do on our internal testing, because we like to listen to you (especially when you are in a good mood) and our internal testing never comes close to all of you hammering our code when youre playing.
Some other notable things which you should keep in mind:
Pre-order items and other keys If you havent gotten your pre-order items or are having problems with your key not giving access. Make sure that where you bought it, you got all your codes. This can be the pre-order code (sometimes on your receipt), your game access code, third extras code and the code for launching nuclear missiles. In case its the last one, please contact your nearest police station as you might be in trouble. In case of the other ones, make sure you enter all your codes.
Link your Console Account There were problems both with the Arkhunter website and the account linking but that should now be solved. Head over to account linking to claim your rewards! Like most items, such as pre-order, you claim them ingame afterwards in the store.
Try out Shadow Wars and PVP maps This should not all be about whats wrong or sadness. If you are one of the very very very many that are ingame and not experiencing the issues above, this message is for you; try it out and let us know. If you dont like it or cant, please, also let us know. Our interest in high velocity impacts to grin area and vicinity is considerable.
That being said. Im watching as we speak a large number of our operations team around the XBOX servers which just crashed again. That is no small feat, the XBOX cluster has more cores than an army of gold farming bot runners would know what to do with. But they will persevere, as they always have and wont stop till theyre up again. The servers, not them, you pervert.
Weve already pushed out a PC client patch to address crashes and a server update last night and we have another juicy server update for everyone in about 16 hours or so.
Ave Arkhunter,
Oveur
Nathan Richardsson
Executive Producer Defiance
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